The First Bad Man

by Miranda July

What a magical way to get around. I’d always thought of these types of machines as toys for uneducated people who didn’t care about the environment, but maybe they weren’t. Maybe this was a kind of meditation. I felt connected to everything and the motor volume held me at a level of alertness I wasn’t used to. I kept waking up and then waking up from that, and then waking up even more. Was everything redneck actually mystical? What about guns?

We hadn’t spoken since I gave him my blessing; I guessed he was busy actually doing all the things I was pretending he was. The thought gave me a sad ache, and even this ache was arousing.

It could never be proven, but I suspected we were becoming stiff at the same time, possibly even ejaculating in unison, the way women’s menstrual periods sometimes become synchronized.

HER COWLIKE VACUOUSNESS DIDN’T REALLY bother me anymore. Or it didn’t matter—her personality was just a little piece of parsley decorating warm tawny haunches.

Cream in my puss, she begged. In me! In me! her puss whined, through aching mushy lips.

The sorrow that never goes away.

Clee’s eyes were shut and her brow was sweaty; it wasn’t so long ago that she was two animals, Carl’s sperm and the ovum of Suzanne. And now the same thing was happening inside her, a new sorrowful creature was putting itself together as best it could.

He walked to the elevator. He pressed the button and we both listened, my therapist and I, and waited for this part to be over—the part where he had already left but was still with us.

They were terrible people, even slightly worse than most. I stalled, fumbling with the sleeves of my gown. Should I introduce myself or try to kill them? Not violently, just enough that they wouldn’t exist.

It occurred to me that the doctor had said only that the baby would live. Not that he would run, or eat food, or talk. Living just meant not dying, it didn’t necessarily include any bells and whistles.

Was I like honey thinking it’s a small bear, not realizing the bear is just the shape of its bottle?

I had been quiet when there was no reason to be quiet and consistent when consistency didn’t matter. For the last twenty years I had lived as if I was taking care of a newborn baby.

If you were wise enough to know that this life would consist mostly of letting go of things you wanted, then why not get good at the letting go, rather than the trying to have?

“Did I get it wrong? Clee said there would be gum popcorn?” “It’s really hard to explain, because I’m working on a lot of different levels?” She heaved the biggest bag over her shoulder. “I’m surprised she even told you about it.” “Well, she just told me the gum popcorn level of it.”